1. Technical Field
This document relates to the field of armor to protect vehicles and other objects against damage from ballistic devices such as small arms ammunition, fragmentation from explosive devices, and the like. More particularly, this document relates to “non-metallic” armor, that is, armor that is not composed primarily of metal.
2. Background Art
Armed confrontations may occur with alarming frequency in today's world. Such confrontations may range from organized warfare to urban police encounters, and may include such activities as guerrilla warfare, exchanges between security forces and irregulars, encounters with gangs or individual criminals, and/or terrorist attacks. Targets of such attacks and encounters may be military personnel, police, and other security forces, or civilians, either as individuals or in small or large groups.
When people who anticipate that they might be the targets of such attacks are in open areas, many commonly wear body armor to prevent injuries from bullets or fragmented metal from explosive devices. Police officers, military personnel and security officers commonly wear such body armor. However, when such people are riding in vehicles, due to issues of practicality and comfort, many do not wear the body armor. Further, civilians who are riding in vehicles do not normally have body armor even if it would be valuable to wear it, since most do not anticipate that they will be attack targets. For those riding in a vehicle, the best protection is to armor the vehicle. Armoring of vehicles has been done for a long time. Normally such armoring has involved attachment of heavy metal plates (usually steel plates) to the exterior of the vehicles or, where vehicle appearance remains important, placed within the body walls and doors of the vehicle. Such metal plates are usually extremely heavy, very difficult to install, adversely affect the performance of the vehicle, and are costly. All of these adverse factors affect not only the use of armoring for civilian vehicles such as cars and trucks but also armoring of military vehicles, since the military has limited funds and personnel available for extensive armor-related projects.
It is desirable to have available vehicle armor which is lightweight, effective, readily installed and replaced if damaged, and which is available at reasonable cost, to insure that the maximum number of vehicles can be armored and the armor can be readily maintained by immediately available personnel without major diversion of such personnel from other necessary duties. It is further desirable for such armor to also be useful for protection of structures other than vehicles, such as buildings of many types, including hard-wall and soft-wall buildings. In addition, it is desirable to have a method for the manufacture of such armor based on a refined, well-developed, technically advanced process, which provides high production rates and high quality product, and which is also cost-effective.